Robert Sutherland Smith started his City career the year before I was born. He is, I think, 157 years old. He and I have worked together for almost eight years. at t1ps He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celenrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. He is a great one for focussing on yield. He is also going to do a monthly column for me on this blog on the subject that really interests him, life on Hampstead Heath. I am sure we all look forward to “Pond Life.” RSS kicks off with his take on Barclays Bank and those wicked banksters.
Because the yield is too low for a bank (in historic terms), Barclays Bank (BARC)shares are clearly viewed by the market as a ‘momentum’ stock; the elementary investment principle being, that because the shares are going up, buy some more? So good so far as it goes; but an increasingly insufficient justification as a share price rises, further discounting whatever it is the future holds. As the late, great lamented philosopher, Sam Goldwyn, taught us! ’Never make forecasts – particularly about the future!’ Had he had been alive to run the Federal Reserve Bank in the in the 1990s and not a picture studio, we might have avoided a lot of trouble.
The possibilities for banks and the banking model generally, have been given a boost with the latest results and share price performance of the Bank of America. Having been in a dreadful condition, BoA has just proved itself the best performing US bank in terms of an annual share price rise – up116% over one year
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